JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — There aren’t many settings that can be more serious than a news meeting. Listening to journalists discuss the events that are shaping our lives and finding ways to share that information with our audience is engaging.
I often find myself more interested in the auxiliary discussions when the group digresses into side conversations about current events.
This was no different in our July 4th morning meeting when the topics on the table were fireworks, heat, and hydration.
The latter turned into side conversations on alcoholic beverages and then someone referred to drinking a BORG.
“A what?” I asked. I knew they weren’t referring to Star Trek aliens, but what I didn’t know was how is a BORG related to alcohol and hydration.
Turns out everything.
Fortunately, the younger set in the newsroom educated me.
BORG stands for “blackout rage gallon.” It’s the latest college alcohol-drinking trend. It starts with a gallon jug of water. Half of the water is dumped out and replaced with alcohol, sweet flavorings, and something for hangovers like Pedialyte, Liquid I.V., or BIOLYTE.
It's not for sharing.
Search BORG on TikTok and it’s evident just how popular this trend is. The earliest video on it dates to March 2020.
With Covid going full tilt, the communal drinking days were over, so the BORG was born out of necessity.
College students started posting more about BORGs last year and the trend doesn’t seem to be slowing.
In a video posted in March with more than 17 million views, a college student on TikTok made a BORG starting with a half-filled gallon jug of water. He filled the empty space with a bottle and a half of New Amsterdam vodka, strawberry-watermelon water enhancer, and two hydration packets.
He then gave it a name because a BORG isn’t a BORG without a name. The jug is topped off with a punny name like, “Borgingham Palace,” “Brown v. the Borg of Education,” or “Our Borg and Savior.”
And then it’s down the hatch.
BORG drinking is binge drinking
The CDC defines binge drinking as five or more drinks on an occasion for men and four for women.
Drinking a BORG certainly sounds more sanitary than drinking off of a keg tap that a dozen people put in their mouths while doing keg stands, or drinking jungle juice from a trash can in the basement of a frat house where dozens of people refill by dipping in their used cup. You also can give these creative binge drinkers credit for even considering hydrating prior to imbibing.
Kudos aside, it’s still binge drinking and it’s all fun until it’s not.
The University of Massachusetts in March issued a warning about BORGs after 28 ambulances were called there in a single weekend.
"[The Amherst Fire Department] and UMass officials said many students were observed carrying plastic gallon containers, believed to be 'borgs' (blackout rage gallons, a mix of alcohol, electrolytes and water)," a news release stated.
A month before the UMASS incident, The Boston Globe interviewed a doctor about the trend calling it dangerous. “I have concerns that students are going to underestimate the risks of binge drinking because [the borg] carries this aura of a healthy method,” Dr. Gus Colangelo stated in the article. He added, “Consuming eight to 16 shots of vodka is a risk regardless of the rest of the contents in the BORG.”
Harold Goodridge is Digital Director at First Coast News, On Your Side, and an award-winning columnist.
